Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign got underway before most of the other ones; eight years ago, as a matter of fact. Only the most hopeless naifs saw her carpetbagging senatorial campaign as anything other than a prelude to a run for the big brass ring. She spent her time in the Senate trying to establish her bona fides as someone distinct from Mrs. Bill Clinton, the First Lady that had been viewed by much of America as an evil-tempered harpy, and putting together an image of thoughtful statesmanship designed to carry her into the Oval Office.
As the current campaign got underway, it seemed that her work had paid off. The word "inevitable" was bandied about, and early primaries seemed to support that conclusion. But the wheels on the wagon started to wobble...
No sooner had Obama's campaign turned things into a horse race, than the carefully cultivated image of the Kinder, Gentler Hillary began to slip. The Illinois senator had stumbled across the perfect weapon against Hillary's inevitability: Nothing. Faced with punching air, Hillary began flailing wildly. With no positions to attack, she was left no choice but to go after Obama himself, and Mr. & Mrs. Middle America are reminded of the termagant they spent the eight years of the Clinton administration loving to hate.
In a matter of months we have gone from a Hillary campaign that was a juggernaut of inevitability to a Hillary that looks like a Limbaugh parody of First Lady Clinton, lashing out in snide personal attacks and quibbling over the definitions of "denounce" and "reject". Left hitting smoke, Clinton looks less the polished senator and more the character of a Barbara Olson nightmare, complete with staff shakeups and circular firing squads of insider finger-pointing. Make fun of Barack's empty rhetoric of Change and Hope all you want, but it was the perfect iceberg to put in the path of the unsinkable Clinton.
EDITED TO ADD: Incidentally, McCain is plagued by almost identical personality handicaps, but was saved from them by the fact that A) He started at the back of the pack, B) His opponents folded quickly, and C) The "Will The Real Conservative Please Stand Up" theme of the GOP debates provided him something to talk about other than what a bunch of poopie-heads he thought his opponents were.
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12 comments:
As I said about Obama: an object at rest cannot be stopped.
Stolen from The Tick.
Clinton should reside herself to the fact she's going to be a Kennedy, Kerry, Schumer, etc. and will just be a Party Boss.
-SayUncle
"Barack's Empty Rhetoric of Change and Hope"
What a fantastic phrase.
The fact that such emptiness is selling is worrisome but my cynicism tells me I shouldn't be surprised.
It's not so much that the emptiness is selling, as it is that it offers his opponent nothing to attack other than the candidate himself, which makes her look like... well... Hillary Clinton.
Brilliant, really.
She'll be back in four or eight years. Power lust doesn't die quickly, if at all, and that woman has a major case of it.
I don't know about that. If she breaks up spectacularly enough on re-entry, she may wind up Howard Deaning herself.
mornin', tamara: kevin over at his blog "the smallest minority" had a little discussion going the other night to which i added my puffy little response (fueled, i admit, by the red-flagged nascar race and a mich light or five)...some libloon had asked in what way obama is not like hitler, stalin, et al...
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those individuals were firebrands of their own conjure...their evil, and genius, and flaws, and failures were singular because they were the godheads of their own movements...but not obama...
obama is simply the (current) figurehead, not the godhead, of a minority movement whose goals and motives we can only debate and ponder...these very relative few who suffuse modern American media, entertainment, and "intellectuals" have found their new goldenboy, one gifted with an amazing charisma, oratory, presence, and mesmerizing cultability...and bonus, he's black! what a perfect vehicle!
and what serendipity that these traits and abilities come on the scene at the right place, at the right time, and with the right "competition"...and he's a clean slate! there is no baggage, there is no record, there are no skeletons, because he is new, and fresh, and young, and so wonderfully malleable!
it is no wonder that the old figurehead, the former darling of this godhead movement, finds his/her self cast upon the heap like yesterday's pat'e...inconvenient reminders of prior, disgraced efforts to inflict its shadowy will and unknown purpose on what's left of free will and the free world...you can see the shock and hurt in the face(s) of bill/hill, hear it in their voices, as they realize the money, the power, and the adoration that was theirs, has been taken away like spoiled bourgeoisie royalty whose reign has been deposed by the real power behind the throne, their aristocratic patrons.
the further glaring way that this movement is unlike those despots of the past is that they must find a way to herd and dazzle the simple majority into overcoming the inconvenient formality of popular election...and obama is "the way"
even mainstream media, albeit inadvertently, has recognized the mindless, entranced nature of the throngs that trek by the tens of thousands to obama's "revivals", terming them pilgrimages, and that they are, in every sense of the word...they are promised salvation, and healing, and free riches, in exchange for just their faith (vote).
and they will give it, and the figurehead will succeed, and the movement will have its chance, once again, to inflict its purposes and control on the world...
but they will fail, once again, because though they will control the majority for now, their godhead is small, and inherently evil, and cowardly...
and there is this...the opposition may be the minority, and temporarily disjointed, and without real leadership, but we outnumber the godhead of their majority, and we see through their transparent figurehead, and into the dark soul of who and what they are...
we are Americans, we are free, and we will relinquish that freedom when they, God forbid, pry our cold, dead fist from its embrace.
and so i have taken up your convoluted challenge, markadelphia, and you are right!
for obama, thy name is not hitler, nor lenin, nor mao...obama, thy name is shill!
godhead, come out from the shadows, let us see you, and hear you...and by the Grace of God, your true purpose will be exposed, and it will be defeated...again.
jtc
(yeh, i know...long, wordy, melodramatic...but, 30 years behind my ffl/pawnbroker counter,,,guess i was exposed to a few theorists...)
Quibbling over semantics?
As the wife of a certain public figure who openly debated the meaning of "is", she's been well-versed in quibbling.
Almost Shakespearian, I'd say.
lorimor-
My first thought was that it is not the emptyness that was selling, it was the marketing and packaging that was selling the product. If the packaging WAS in fact empty, as so many think it is, that would not worry me in the slightest. What worries me is that the package is NOT empty. I believe it contains a virulent strain of Socialism. It's labeled "Change" and "Hope", and half the people in the country are screaming "I want me some of that!"
Telling them "Caveat emptor!" won't help them at all, as it would be gibberish to them...... they want that pretty box.
"Make fun of Barack's empty rhetoric of Change and Hope all you want, but it was the perfect iceberg to put in the path of the unsinkable Clinton."
Let's hope he's not the iceberg that sinks America as well.
Y'know, for all the hype given to presidential elections, the Executive's only one of three branches of Gov't, and (if I remember AP U.S. Government 121 rightly) it's not even the one that makes laws or reviews their constitutionality. And if there's one thing that'll make Republicans in Congress act like conservatives, it's a pinko in the Oval Office...
Tam said "And if there's one thing that'll make Republicans in Congress act like conservatives, it's a pinko in the Oval Office..."
Either way, no matter who wins,they may get their chance... Jim B
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